Since he took office, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been on a crusade to make his city a healthy and safe place to live, and he’s banning just about anything and everything he can to make it that way.
Bloomberg has banned or has tried to ban food donations to the homeless, loud earphones and Styrofoam.
The most controversial of Bloomberg’s attempts to protect us from ourselves was a ban on sugary drinks more than 16 ounces.
Fortunately, this policy was recently struck down by the New York State Supreme Court.
But this hasn’t stopped Bloomberg’s messianic mission to save us all from our own vices – or at least all of the citizens in New York City.
Next, Bloomberg wants stores that sell cigarettes and other tobacco products to hide all displays of these products, which can usually be found behind the counter.
These displays, according to the nosey neighbor mayor, “invite young people to experiment with tobacco.”
While there are major First Amendment implications for restricting the ability of a company to relay truthful, non-misleading information to its consumers about its products and price, this latest step by Bloomberg shows his fundamental distrust of the ability (and rights) of people to decide how to conduct their own lives, raise their own children, eat what they want to eat, drink what they want to drink and live how they want to live.
Arguments about the growth of the nanny state have nothing to do with what’s “best for us or our health.”
They have everything to do with taking away our choices and our freedom while making us idly dependent upon the government to keep us from putting bad things in our bodies and protecting us from actions that might harm us.
There is no doubt that seat-belts save lives. There is no doubt that cigarettes are bad for you.
There is no doubt that limiting the consumption of sodas and other fatty foods contributes to health and wellbeing.
But just because you believe that a lifestyle without these unhealthy habits and reckless practices is the best way to live, it still doesn’t give you or Mayor Bloomberg or anyone the right to limit the choices that other people have and the decisions they’re allowed to make about their own lives.
Some have argued that we have to limit unhealthy lifestyles because we all bear the cost of health insurance.
But that’s not an argument for creating a bureaucratic nanny state that limits the choices we can make; it’s an argument for reforming our broken health care system.
Lack of consumer choice in medical care is one of the main reasons our health care system is so messed up.
Additionally, a health care system that makes everyone interdependent through taxpayer subsidies, over regulation and government intervention is hardly a strong justification for limiting even more of our choices.
The nanny state only grows because we allow politicians like Bloomberg to ban, regulate and restrict the freedoms and choices we have.
At some point, we need to stand up and demand that we be treated like adults who can make adult choices, even if some of us choose unhealthy lifestyles.
In the end, the only way to ensure that individuals make good decisions is if they are allowed to make dumb decisions and take personal responsibility for their mistakes.
Justin Hayes is pursuing a master’s degree in Political Communication. His column appears on Wednesdays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
